Free as a Bird
by MadiYasha
Summary: It's the next best thing to be.  Pickles/Tony, Pickles/Nathan


It wasn't unlike Pickles to indulge in narcotics. He had abused everything from pot to heroin and back, sometimes all at once. But there were more deep-seated drugs in the world, ones that failed to be recognized by the world as the addicting substances that they were underneath it all. The most prominent of them all, was love.

Pickles couldn't tell you if he had been **in** love, but there was definitely something there, something strong that kept him with these people. Not just with Tony, but with all of them. Something about the relationship they all shared screamed that it was different, and he honestly couldn't have experienced it before. Nonetheless, it was one of his favourite highs-that friendship.

He wasn't at all the kind to let people in, but when he did they were running away mere days after knowing him. They called him histrionic, and he felt as if he always had a story to tell. When he opened up his eyes and realized no one gave a shit about his life, he found it best to become reclusive about his past, present and future. He gave up on his mind, gave up on his body, and made a point to ruin them with the substances at his disposal.

When his family had driven him to near insanity, he discovered another addicting emotion-sheer, unadulterated anger. The kind that left a bitter taste in your mouth, the deep kind of wrath that made you scream and thrash and _run_, run far far away. When his feet couldn't carry him any further he opened his eyes and realized that somehow, along the absurd traverse through his own mind, he had wound up in Los Angeles, sleeping in a dumpster and making a living playing a crappy acoustic guitar. It took him months to afford that Goldtop, but he knew that all the hard work would pay off.

In fact, Pickles could have told you the exact moment he meant Antonio Thunderbottom. The weather conditions, the people walking past in a trance on the dingy Californian sidewalk, the outfit he was wearing-he remembered them all. His earliest memory of Snakes n' Barrels was the brawl he had with Tony in that very alley. Pickles had let his mouth run-yet again-and said something stupid to the older man, and they ended up beating the living shit out of each other, spitting froth and throwing punches and curb stomping.

When they finally exhausted themselves of every ounce of energy they had, Tony started laughing quietly and placed his hand on the shoulder of a very confused and tired Pickles. He could still remember the look of sheer delight in his eyes, blinking past dark locks of hair, grinning and telling him how he fought with so much heart and vigor. Telling him that he should come back and see if he wanted to try his hand at playing with the band. Telling him, hey, get out of that garbage can, someone as vehement as you doesn't belong there.

_Get out of there. You don't belong in a garbage can._

It was after about 12 band meetings of them fighting over who would take the role as frontman that Pickles finally spoke before being spoken to. Meekly mentioning that he wrote some music himself, that he could play and sing at the same time, and that he could suck up his stage fright if they let him try some stuff out.

It was like the planets aligned. Like with the fiery Irishman out in front, leading them, everything was absolutely perfect. They never had an issue with roles again. Pickles, charismatic and energetic by nature, didn't at all mind being the life of the party. And god, could the kid _sing_. It was only months before everyone knew who Snakes 'n' Barrels was.

Pickles could have also told you exactly when he fell for Tony. The man was far more expressionistic than he let on, and a hopeless romantic by nature. He spoke with a thick, velvet voice in an accent that slowly faded over time, and Pickles could still explain to you that he sang in a breathtaking tone, it just wasn't right for the sound they were going for. He was fine with that, because Pickles learned that he never missed an opportunity to sing his heart out. In their hotel room at midnight-the nights before the shows and the groupies-the nights where it was just the static of the tv and crappy room service, he absentmindedly chirped out Beatles songs, and Pickles fell asleep to it every night.

You could say that after saving Pickles once, Tony felt responsible for his life. Like a brother. Like a friend. And it showed. He viciously defended the younger man, even throwing punches at Candy and Bullets when they so much as made one little remark. It was completely out of his nature, but it just made Pickles admire him more. Tony was always there for him, from taking care of him when he was ill to beating the drugs out of his hands to stop him from overdosing. He acted like a guardian angel.

It was a night of the former when it hit him at once. Pickles was laying in bed, suffering from some bout of the flu and shivering beneath layers and layers of blankets as Tony silently worried over him. Having done everything he possibly could, the older man resolved to gently running his fingers through long scarlet hair and humming _Goodnight_ as Pickles drifted off. They decided, that night, that it wasn't love-just deep, meaningful "like."

Nothing new. Lots of people in band ended up being queer for their bandmates. The sex was just a promising as they both imagined it to be, and before the drugs started taking such a toll on Tony, everything in Pickles' life was perfect.

Pickles looked disdainfully around the bar, and took another swig of whatever it was he was drinking. He didn't even care anymore, whatever got him drunk and shut out the rest of the world.

They couldn't pinpoint the moment that they started falling apart.

Every documentary and recalling and article blamed it on the hard drugs and alcohol. It was a factor, but Pickles knew better. He knew it was as it had always had been-his defective personality and the inability for anyone he had ever met to really accept him for who he was. He concluded bitterly, that Snakes 'n' Barrels loved him, but they also hated him for acting like himself. He didn't blame them at all, he would too.

He could tell you of the night when him and Bullets had an explosive fight, throwing shit and trashing the room and screaming at each other before the show. Bullets asking him, why do you have to hide from us? Why can't you just be Pickles?

Pickles darkly telling him that if they knew the real Pickles, they would never want to see him again.

Over time, he did listen. He started to open up. There were gratuitous amounts of nights that ended in them getting totally baked, sitting on their trashy tour-bus couch, and explaining through glazed eyes and limp mouths to each other that, they were family. And that as gay and sappy as it sounded, they knew that they couldn't live without each other. They confided in each other their personal lives and dreams, their pasts and futures and they always built those futures together. They had come from paths paved with broken glass, and suddenly Pickles had 3 brothers. His heart was disarmed, and it was beating in sync with theirs.

It was his favourite drug out of them all.

His biggest regret was never telling them that no matter how much shit he put them through, Pickles always loved them. He'd come to them in shambles, having some anxiety attack, wasted out of his mind. He'd cry and wheeze and cling to them and yell at them and it would be like cycling through a million different emotions at once. His bandmates didn't know what to do, and eventually they grew sick of it.

"I'll always be with you," became "You've changed, Pickles."

The apathetic attitude from his bandmates turned to bullying, and the guilt that came with them completely ruining their frontman came with drug addiction. It wasn't until the second time they got called to rehab that Pickles took his guitar and left. There was no way in hell he was going to stay in that hellish place with three people who didn't even care about him anymore. He took his notebook, festooned with complex drum and guitar patterns, burning vocals and zeal. He walked, and he experienced the unpleasant crash of the narcotics he had been messing with.

Pickles would take to cocaine or ecstasy a lot easier than love or friendship, nowadays.

So here he was, some early hour of the morning, stumbling through the streets of a backwater town far away from where he called home. And his knees buckled under him and he fell into the garbage heap and it felt nostalgic enough to almost be warm. Bittersweet at best. Absinthe in his pocket, fire in his eyes, and enough heartbreak to fill fifty teenage romance novels, he dozed in and out of slumber.

After several long blinks, he came face to face with the Hulk. Or, at least, some enormous, green-eyed monster that didn't at all look to friendly. His hair fell across his shoulders like black tar, and his arms were crossed as he invaded the redhead's privacy. Pickles blearily blinked up at him through a ratsnest of fire, his breath stinging his own nostrils as he spoke.

"Whet d'feck are you starin' at, Tahnto?"

The next thing Pickles felt was a muscular, calloused hand grab him by the throat and push him against the chilling wall. He weakly looked down on the ebony-haired man and delivered a swift kick to his stomach, gasping for breath as he felt himself being released. He preempted the next strike and before either of them could blink, they were in a bloody pile on the ground.

The quarterback coughed, and gently rose to his feet, leaning against the wall. He offered a hand to Pickles and started to giggle (if you could call it that, the gravelly, guttural voice that resonated from him wasn't exactly virginal) smiling a feral grin and pulling the guitarist to his feet. "You got some fighting spirit, bro."

He tried to clear his foggy head as he falteringly stood up. "Heh, theanks."

"Sorry, uh..." He trailed off, as if he had to process the right way to construct his sentence. "About that. I, uh, don't like being called that."

"S'no prahblem, I shed really jest keep my mouth shet sometimes." Pickles flashed an infamous lop-sided grin and then promptly fell over on his ass.

"Shit, dude, are you okay?"

"Yeauh, jest..." He cringed. "Yer pretty strahng, is all."

"C'mon," The stranger offered. "I'm not very smart but I make an okay crutch?"

This elicited a laugh from Pickles. "You gahtta deal."

"So, what were you doing in that dumpster anyways?" The obsidian one enquired.

"Crashin'. I jest... didn't come from a very nice pleace in life, is all." His breath caught in his throat, and he choked out the next couple words. "Nuthin' I ced summarize fer ya, though."

"Sucks," He said, trying to force as much sympathy into that one word as he possibly could.

"I pretty much figgured thet a garbeage cean's the best place for a guy like me right aboat now." The labour in his breathing became more and more noticeable as he spoke.

"Hey," The stranger growled. "Cut that shit out, okay? I'm not into that self-pity crap. You just beat the crap out of me in a fight _you_ picked. Do you have any idea how awesome that is? Most people are too afraid to even talk to me. So lighten up, alright, Freckles? You're coming to my shitty apartment and sleeping on my couch because you don't belong in a goddamn dumpster."

He gave no response except a smile and a "If I cean't call you Tahnto, then you cean't call me Freckles."

As the streetlights dimmed and the Floridian sun bled into the horizon, Pickles would later look upon the second time he ever fell in love.

"_By the way, my name's Nathan."_


End file.
